Lost to the Mask
by Sayyadina
Summary: A downfall easily avoided yet written by its victim


_"What was Claquesous? He was night. Before showing himself, he waited till the sky was daubed with black. At night he came out of a hole, to which he returned before day. Where was this hole? Nobody knew. In the most perfect darkness, and to his accomplices, he always turned his back when he spoke. Was his name Claquesous? No. He said, "My name is Nothing-at-all." If a candle was brought he put on a mask…Claquesous was restless, roving, terrible…it was not certain he had a face, nobody having seen anything but this mask. He disappeared as if he melted into thin air; he came and went like an apparition."__ Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (Marius, Book VII Patron-Minette, Chapter iii)_

x x x

Lost to the Mask 

x x x 

Man can strive to be shadow. The man thought little of his own form, nothing of his name – he was his profession. And yet, he yearned to deny that profession, assassin, whom the cruder named murderer, for he was a man of deeds. The cool touch of death defined him and yet he remained enigmatic. The shadows withheld no secrets from him; he was their 'master'. Societal fears had named him thus; society had forgotten that none can control death. 

Shadow and darkness mean black to the underworld that he belonged. There, black is life, and light means death. Secrecy is black is life. The police may hunt criminals and succeed, but when they hunt smoke they inevitably fail. Logically, safety is remaining smoke over being human. Security is blackening one's face. Ink, then, can save lives in the gutters. Yet ink will remove itself. Ink runs. Ink is imperfect.

o o o

When light comes, shadows must flee or they melt to the nothingness. To combat the time that he must secrete himself away, he expanded his knowledge. He had spent his life not as a gamin, a child of the streets, but as a student. He had discovered many interesting skills that became so ingrained that to lose them would be to have his heart stop, his breath leave him.

The question had always amused him. The question was simple – where to gain what he needed to become the shadow. A pure use of the substance named for the moon itself. There was a mirror-maker on his street, close by, and suspecting nothing about the drain on his supplies. The man-shadow preferred, however, the apothecary. There was something that fed his sense of irony to take medicinal substances for the baser strata of societal crime. He would go to the apothecary.

His back was cramped from being in such a painful position for so long, and the shadow-that-was-man stirred from his pose. He held the pestle loosely between his fingers and surveyed the crushed crystals in the stone bowl below. Satisfied, the shadow pours the powder into another bowl, a lighter one. He weighs it in his hand, drizzling water into it until the bowl became half again as heavy. That was best, saturation. Measurements were unimportant so long as he had twice crystal to water. It was a large expense, water that was pure. It was worth what he could do with it. He laughs then, briefly and terribly, to think of the price, which to most was counted in francs. To he, cost was gauged by the number of throats slit, the blood spilt for his cause.

The burst of mirth in chuckling, no matter how brief it may have been, had not been worthwhile. It reneged the normal joys of delight in a violent fit of coughing that nearly brought him to his knees, his body heaving, breath barely enough to keep him from passing to the next world.

He recovers; he always recovers, each time taking him longer to return to his peak. It was imperative now that he did so, for he had an operation tonight, a crime planned. It was time to face the night, and begin again his quest to be more than man. Face, an operative term for what he did, for as soon as light sliced across his vision he became night incarnate. The touch of the gilded sun even reflected by her lunar lover turned his flesh black through the caress of lunar caustic. The power it gave brought him to apply the dissociated, dissolved powder each night without fail.

This night was nearing dawn. All ends – tales are brought to a close, candles snuffed out when they have been used up. Even the ghosts of fear are conquered after enough time. He would be too, for just as the vampire who is caught in the sun is vanquished, the sun would be this shadow's undoing.

He did not know it had risen. He did not see the pistol, aimed with a steady hand by one with the power to arrest. He did not feel the bullet, already that far gone.

o o o

The Inspector had been shocked to note the figure of a man coming towards him at this time in the morning when most were still in bed. He observed silently, and upon realizing that he was not perceived, he took a couple strides forwards to better examine the man.

The first sense that reported was his hearing, for the other could not move two steps without stopping for breath. He could regarded the pained wheezing stoically, recording it in the encyclopedia of his thoughts to write into his report.

Upon closer examination of the individual, the Inspector ascertained that he was not in shadow as previously had been assumed. The assassin was blue. The flesh revealed was a sickly azure accentuated with blackened mouth and nostrils. There was something terrible in those two blacks, the face made obviously intentionally so, the lips a horrid colouration – skin cells poisoned to something the same yet other. Through this, the creature merely continued its ambling gate, reddened eyes staring at nothing.

Respect filled him for this dark being who had managed such evil in so little time, but that respect did not stay his hand. The pistol cocked, he did not pause in separating the thing from its life. Perhaps morbid, he finally approached to ensure that death had occurred. Moribund interests took hold, the Inspector bent to examine the saliva choked in the beast's last breaths. Black. Blood was combined on the palette of the pavement, creating a dark mixture. Awareness rose in the officer, he now knew that the man would have collapsed in moments had he not been shot. His blackened face was testament to self-applied poison.

A little knowledge is dangerous. The assassin had not known enough of what he dabbled with to ascertain the toxin, to know the danger. A poison by any other name kills as readily. It matters not what light pierces the shadow, only that it is now destroyed.


End file.
